If I’m following ivan’s reasoning, not capturing bin Laden is not for what he would reveal if captured, but because his continued freedom perpetuates our excuse to pursue the real, unstated goals of the invasion.
(That may not be what he meant at all. “They don’t really want him alive” can be taken multiple ways.)
There is also this:
I don’t see what you mean. If P was proven, we wouldn’t need Occam. Occam’s Razor applies when something is not proven, to select the simplest case from those that are possible.
Seems to me before entertaining arguments about why the attack were staged (including discussing who profited from it and who needed it as an excuse and whatnot), the major stumbling block remains how it was staged. I’ve yet to see any plausible evidence the mainstream sequence of events is false.
Similarly, in Kennedy threads I don’t give a fuck about theories involving Castro or the mob or the CIA or Nixon or whatever. Just summarize what happened in the hour immediately prior to the shooting and the hour immediately after, and the evidence of same. Anything else is a waste of time.
[QUOTE=EasyPhil]
Your statement seems to be directly contradicted by the following:
[/QUOTE]
I’m reading through your link and I’m coming up empty where you got the second quote from. I don’t see it anywhere on the page. Is it from a link on the page for the link you provided? Here is what is on the page from your link:
This is all from after the US invasion of Afghanistan and I don’t see how it contradicts what Tom was saying at all…in fact, it seems to really not have anything to do with anything under discussion. I can’t speak to your second quote since it doesn’t seem to be related to your link…did you forget the second link? Also, could you elucidate a bit on what you think the discrepancies are exactly, perhaps provide some minimal detail on where you are going with this?
Just for drill, from the Wiki link I used several times earlier in the thread, here is the time table for Afghanistan post 9/11:
Seriously…this link talks about plans by the Bush administration to attack al-Qaida (which, you know, was in Afghanistan). The fact that he was only just getting around to this in September is a good indication of the low priority the Bush administration had concerning AQ…and, tangentially, the Taliban who were aiding and sheltering them. I’m not sure what you think this proves, except as a nitpick against Tom.
I will admit that the first link indiucates that the U.S. provided some undetermined amount of intelligence and logistic support to countries actively opposing the Taliban during the summer of 2001. I had not been aware of that support, although I note that it was pretty much background stuff.
The second quote (taken from this BBC item) and the subsequent quote about Bush being “expected to” order direct confrontation with al Qaida, (not Afghanistan), are both anecdotes that were conveniently aired in the aftermath of the WTC/Pentagon attacks and look a lot like ass-covering.
Ass covering for what? Are you trying to say that the administration of the time was trying to give the impression they were going to attack Afghanistan prior to 911?
You’re all over the place, try re-reading the last couple of posts, the information that I provided directly contradicted what tomndebb said. This is no nitpick, he’s speaking matter of factly and in absolute terms about an item that has been contradicted by other information.
Good one. One point for you.
Let me clarify that. There is a true story of a $2 billion construction plan with the Taliban. It makes a splash and defines a set of relationships. Taliban guys in Texas, Argentinians in Afghanistan, all to make a buck. The list of ‘players’ gives a sense of scale to the web of transactions.
A claim of ‘aiding and abetting’ by the Taliban to AQ should similarly have some examples. Not $2 billion worth? That’s ok- what do ya got? Analyze the data, map out the transactions, and you can get a sense of scale of the relationship.
One point to Tomndebb for an article describing Omar talking to OBL. The link says they had a chat.
Do you believe they had a face-to-face? Two points if you can prove that. Was it a telephone call? Still, good one!
Let’s look at the ‘players’ in that article, no?
-Osama Bin Laden
-Embassy bombings
-Saudi millionaire
-Charitable and educational Islamic organizations
-OBL’s headquarters
-Jalalabad
-computers, satellites
-international news like TIME and CNN
-Suspect #1
-‘heroic’ US military installation bombers
-clerics
-Saudi Arabia
-Islamic front
-US
-Persian Gulf
-Muslim radicals
-mujahedin
-Soviet Union
-The Legend of OBL
-Islamic terror groups
-troops
-safe haven, camps, finance, organization
-Egypt, Algeria, Palestine, Phillippinnees, Jordan.
-Sudan
-US pressure
-Islamist rulers
-the head of Saudi intelligence, Prince Turki al Faisal
-black-turbaned Taliban leaders
-Mullah Mohammed Omar, the cleric who founded the Taliban movement
-Bin Laden’s lair
-cozy relations with radical Islamists in next-door Pakistan
-photos from their spy satellites
-business as usual
Now there are two examples. What do you think? Is the method worth a damn?
I should add that as of 911, OBL must have been able to get the news that he had a giant bulls-eye painted on his ass. Being a mujahideen guerrilla terrorist agent instructor, he takes to the hills like Rambo on crack.
In all seriousness, how are the Taliban going to catch him?
The adjustments to make it fit are pretty much semantic, and so not an out-of-bounds stretch.
Take it this way:
If x is doing P, then Q
Q is a punishment on x.
Therefore, P makes you bad. Really bad.
The point is that Q does not imply that x is actually doing P, or that x is bad.
Take the reverse case that I didn’t treat. How does Occam’s Razor confound the argumentum ad baculum?
Well, since Q does not imply P, than the simplest explanation is very simple:
Q.
I’ve read this whole thread, and was planning on lurking, but when I hear the “empty plane, remote controlled” hypothesis, it bothers me. It bothers me because my wife worked at TJX Corporation during 2001, and personally knew and worked daily with some of the people that died on the planes that hit the WTC. Since that time, I myself have met some of the families that were affected by this.
If the planes were empty, what happened to those people?
al Qaida, not Afghanistan, but sure. Not in some sort of devious wheels-within-wheels way like the Bourne stories or 24, but just in the sort of routine, “Hey! We were working on it.” way that most people and organizations react to disasters.
You don’t find it just a little bit convenient that just after the attacks there is a story about how Bush was about to sign an order before the attacks but did not happen to get around to doing it? At any rate, as I already noted, that purported order was directed against al Qaida and not Afghanistan, directly.
At some point, your conjectures begin to come off much like ivan astikov’s game of whack-a-mole, where every refutation of any improbable scenario is simply met with a different improbable scenario. You folks just “know” that there had to have been a conspiracy by the U.S. government, you simply haven’t figured out which of the millions of possible conspiracies might have been the one used.
@ Robot Arm: You are intended to be convinced that the Taliban are guilty of harboring Al Qaeda because that is the simplest explanation for why they were attacked.
But the US attacking them doesn’t imply that the Taliban actually were harboring AQ.
Maybe they were, maybe they weren’t.
If they weren’t, then the fact of the matter is that AQ is irrelevant to the issue of war with the Taliban’s Afghanistan. The argument collapses to Q. That is, war, period. The rest is an excuse/politics/exploiting the situation etc.
The above could be debunked. It is one of several possible cases.
It explains my interest in the question of whether or not the Taliban could capture OBL if they tried. If they couldn’t, then the above case is more likely.
The difference is that OBL had attempted to destroy the government of Sudan, or at least take out some of its prominent members. Sudan didn’t need any pressure to take an anti-OBL position.
OBL demonstrated a potential to attack a government itself. This dangerous dude hides out in Afghanistan, where the government already has one civil war on its hands, and probably more (mujahedin originating) factions ready to erupt into conflict if provoked. They aren’t necessarily in a position to dictate all the terms of the situation. For instance, the $5 million bounty on OBL’s head from the US probably wasn’t enough incentive to risk getting on this guy’s target list.
That only works by forgetting that it was also mentioned that the Taliban offered to send Bin Laden to another Islamic nation. I have to agree that the Taliban had a way to get to Bin Laden.
Good one. One point for you.